Consumer Culture and the Commodification of Policing and Security
Author(s)
Loader, Ian
Abstract
For as we approach the century’s end, the provision of policing and security is in Britain and other late-modern societies becoming ever more fragmented and commodified. The protection of person and property is now less and less the exclusive province of the public police, and is increasingly being delivered by a plethora of public, commercial and voluntary bodies. Business and government organisations rely heavily on either ‘in-house’ or ‘contracted-in’ security. Shopping malls, airports and other sites of ‘mass private property’ are policed on behalf of their owners (and users) by private operatives. A number of British local authorities have ‘contracted-in’ commercial firms to patrol their housing estates; two have established ‘community forces’. Individuals and communities are turning more and more to forms of security gadgetry (alarms, bars, gates, walls, surveillance cameras and so on) to fortify their homes, and- in some cases- to commercial patrols to keep watch over the surrounding streets. This article examines consumer culture in relation to the commodification of security and quality of life.
